


Boots

by NeKo_Chan13



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia, Backstory, Me: out of data at work and brings a book to read, So yeah, Surprise! I still have no idea how to tag in ao3!, a bit based on my experience with my work boots that I hate deeply :), also me: MMMM PORTAL FIC HELL YEAH, idk it’s just a little story about Chell, like before the games and during them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25812616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeKo_Chan13/pseuds/NeKo_Chan13
Summary: For as long as she can remember, Chell’s first memory was the feeling of some cute rain boots she loved as a child.And it seems her most clear memories where the one where she could remember what shoes she was wearing.
Kudos: 22





	Boots

What is your first memory? For some it’s the smiling face of their parents, for other the warm feeling of a teddy bear pressed against their chest. 

For her it was boots. More specifically, rain boots. She remembers them vividly, it was a rainy day, no idea what season, she was splashing happily in a little water puddle on the side of the road. Her father was there too, playing with her in the miniature lake. They were happy, her little feet covered by those red and black polka dotted rain boots that she loved more than anything. Where her toes were supposed to be, there was a smile and two little antennas, transforming the simple foot wear in a lady bug friend.

Shoes and boots were something special for her, the majority of her vivid memories had the particularity of being attached to the feeling of them on her feet. For example, when she was eight:

She didn’t remembered why she was there, other than it was a science fair. She’d worked really hard on her project with the help of her father to have the most efficient potato battery ever conceived by a child. She remember the sneakers she wore that day for two reason: first she was extremely anxious. She was, who know how many miles underground, at her dad’s working place, and to her surprise, every other children there decided to craft the same project as her apparently. She’d wanted to win, to impress her dad who loved her so much, to show him that one day, she would too be a great Scientist, just like him. 

But since she was alone for the time being, she looked down at her shoes nervously, studying them like she never saw her white and dark blue sneakers.

And second, because of the  _ incident _ . 

Some employees bursted in, shouting at everyone in the room to get out, they where wearing strange masks, (that she would latter know were gaz masks) and hurried everyone out. Looking down once again at her shoes, she sprinted to the door, something made her throat itch and she found herself in a coughing fit until the masked man gave her one of her own. She remembered, as they evacuated, looking around the emergency exits, trying to find her father.

She didn’t find him.

So she looked down at her sneakers, trying to prevent the tears from spilling.

The other shoes she clearly remembered wearing were black ballerina. Simple, but terrifying. To this day, she couldn’t wear some for the simple fact that the memory attached to it was too hard for her liking. 

There was a coffin, open for everyone to see, yet no one seemed interested in it. Some were talking, others were sobbing silently or weeping violently.

She was silent, her mother, hugging her close, was crying softly, looking at her deceased husband. 

For hours that day, she looked at her simple shoes, seeing the exposed skin of her feet contrast against the dark colour of them. They hurt. Only when they left the funeral home did she tear away her gaze from them. She never wore those ballerina again, leaving them to collect dust in the attic, next to her happy memories.

After that, things only got worst, they moved, a lot, her mom trying to find a stable job somewhere, anywhere honestly. They needed money. They ended up in a scrappy appartement, barely enough for the two of them. As soon as she could, she started to work too, trying to give as much as possible to her dear mother. She did everything she could, cook dinner, do the groceries, etc. Almost every job that offered money, she was willing to take, as long as she had time for highschool. That’s how at 16 she had two jobs and barely enough sleep, that’s how at 16, she fell ill. At first it wasn’t much to be worried about, but soon it became clear that it was dragging her down. Her money carefully collected over the years when down the drain with hospital bills, she was too weak to go to school, and stayed at home for months. She didn’t gave up, she was stubborn, her best quality and worst flaw. She learned, and finally got her diploma four years later than the others her age. 

Why did all of that struck her? The majority of time, she was bare feet. And being bare feet became synonym of hard times for her. 

She worked for a few years until luck stuck again. A familiar logo on a flyer, stapled to a lamp post as she exited the bakery she was currently working at. A shitty job, but now at least she knew how to make bread and bagels, that could be useful, right?

She wore the same low heels the day of the interview, she loved those shoes, it was just enough to make her appear a little bit taller, but not enough for people to notice that the shoes were responsible for it. There wasn’t much else to them either, some beige low heels, made out of some fancy looking fabric that was merely a knockoff of a more expensive one. On the interior side, a small zipper allowed the shoes to tie secretly to a shockingly perfect fit. Those shoes where made for her. 

And for where she was going, she needed that sensation of confort. That place, miles underground, took her father away, it was a cold, stale gray, with a constant humming sound coming from seemingly everywhere. 

At least she got hired, it was well payed, she needed money, and if she couldn’t fulfilled her childhood dream of doing science, she’ll watch the others do it from afar.

They gave her metal capped boots. From the first time she slipped her feet into them she disliked them. They where a dark brown, with sticky shoelaces. They were slightly too big for her feet but the worst was that they were heavy, way too heavy for her to feel comfortable. They where keeping her feet warm but it was too warm after her long days of work. What made her silently fume, was the lite, clean shoes of the other employees. Only the janitor and maintenance staff whore those heavy boots. 

These made her feel trapped.

One day, as she was cleaning up some files in a dusty closet, two scientists approached her, calling her by her first name like they knew her from the start. She didn’t respond, only looked at them as they explained that they needed her for some, as they like to call it: “ Testing ” .  They didn’t gave her a choice, they took her with them, she dragged her working boots on the cat walks.

They gave her long, weird braces to wear. Explaining her that she need to tie them around her knee, she complied, being stuck with them anyway the time their tests where finished. With the brace, they told her to wear a orange jumpsuit. Once she was changed, she finally stand up, they stopped her, asking her to take off her boots and socks.

For a moment she hesitated, but got rid of them.

Bare feet, she advances into the greyish test chamber, the braces forced her to stand on the tip of her toes and made metallic scrapping sound as she walked. In front of her there was a sort of ravine created by the panels that made the walls of the chambers, way to high for a human to survive the fall. A male voice spoke up, giving her simple explanation of the so called test.

“Jump, land on your feet.”

Her blood ran cold. She wouldn’t survive the fall. She backed up but there was no escape, she was trapped in this room.

Until she obey. 

Something inside of her she didn’t knew existed flared up, a determined fire burning the fear away, they wanted her to jump? Oh she’ll give them one hell of a jump. 

She took some steps back again, she could see people behind the glasses taking notes, even if she couldn’t make out their faces, there were three. She waited for them to stop writing, seeing as they already assumed that she wouldn’t do it.

But as soon as she hit the end of the chamber, she sprinted off the edge.

Plummeting down, she gained speed, soon reaching terminal velocity, she positioned her feet towards the ground and waited for the impact to break her legs or kill her. 

But it didn’t. 

She landed on her feet, the braces absorbing most of the impact and sending it across all her body like an electric shock. Her breath was cut for a small moment, her leg shaking, not being used to so much energy being transferred to them. 

She looked up, panting. Two new figures where behind another glass, knowing they where looking at her she stared at them, before disappearing behind a door. Her own circular door opened with a joyful chime, she stood up, her knees trembling with the sudden shot of kinetic energy that passed through them, taking her time to adjust, she took one step at a time and got out of the chamber.

An hour later, she was still dressed in the jumpsuit, still wearing the weird braces that saved her life from the fall. If they could count as shoes, she didn’t liked them. A mix of safety and a reminder of her lowest point. Bare feet, yet nothing could happed if she landed on them. 

The scientists quickly came in the infirmary, told her they needed to do more medical testing before sending her off. She followed him to a glass bubble, with a bed inside. He told her to lay in it, that they’re going to scan her internal organs to make sure nothing was misplaced.

She climbed in and the pod closed over her. A smell of almond and vanilla filled the pod, and she fell asleep.

———————

Her sleep was deep, and devoid of any dreams, she didn’t felt like she slept for long. But it was long enough to forget. Once she’d been woken up by a warm feeling, she stood up in her little pod, not knowing anything about where, or who she was. 

She looked around the little glass room. Nothing fancy, a toilet, the bed and a radio playing a cheery tune in loop. She put her feet down to meet the cold hard concrete floor. For reasons she couldn’t recall, this felt wrong. 

A cold, artificial voice greeted her, explaining some things she couldn’t understand. Then the timer above the door reach zero and a blue hole appeared on it. She could see herself from the side, and as she look, a orange oval was resting on the wall, she stepped in it, and emerged from the other side. 

This was going to be fun.

She listened to the only voice she knew. A strange feeling at the back of her head as she exploded that place, and a familiar sense of nausea as the braces strapped to her knees shot waves of pain across her body when she fell from a height no other humans could survive. The empathetic voice was offering her guidance in this deserted place. Until she noticed that the voice, wasn’t a friend but a foe. Giving sarcastic remarks, mocking her ability to solve the tests and clearly not guiding her to the exit of this place. Forcing her to kill her companion cube was too much, she wanted revenge. 

As she portaled out the incinerator, the voice cracked, panicked, telling her to come back, that killing her was just another test. But she knew better now, she may not remember it, but she was stubborn and out for revenge. The same feeling that she felt, what seems like a life time ago, came back raging as she exited the testing track, she had no idea why it was so familiar, but she leaned on it and trusted her guts. 

Once she defeated the owner of the cold voice, a murderous giant AI, hanging from the celling, the room surrounding both of them started to fall apart, after being ejected by the explosions, she passed out in a parking lot. Seeing the forest inviting her in. So close, yet so far away, as she’d been dragged back down that cursed place. 

———————

She couldn’t tell how long she slept like last time, at least now she remembered what happened. Dreading the feeling of the cold ground on her bare feet, she got up, only to find them laced in black and white boots. She observed them, there was still braces at the back of them, but now her feet was covered, protected, and a strange, distant memory came back to her. Not really a memory, more like a feeling. Some strangely fitting low heals, that she loved dearly, mixed with the smell of rain and splashing of rubber boots in a puddle. And another thing, a voice.

A voice that belonged to someone she knew, but was a total stranger to her. A voice important to her, a voice that she dearly missed. In that voice, a single word echoed: “Chell”

Her name. 

The boots got suddenly blurry, she brought her hand to her face and found tears, Chell was crying and she didn’t even knew why.

Who was that person? Why was the feeling those strange white boots made her feel, felt like something so important yet impossible to reach? 

Confused and strangely sad, she curled against herself, hugging her covered feet close to her, trying to remember something. 

Why was this feeling so important? 

Why was those boots making her feel that way? 

Who was that voice?

She didn’t had time to think, pulled out of her inexplicable mourning, someone knocked at the door.

Opening te door, a white sphere with one single blue eye loudly screamed and immediately started chattering away. A voice that felt once again, familiar, but not as important as the one saying her name. 

They tried to escaped together, finally having a friend was something special for Chell. Until they accidentally woke her up, the cold voice took over the facility, and she was forced to test more and more, like old times. 

As she performed the test, thinking about how she could escape this time, the boots reassured her. A strange feeling, because every time she landed, there was pain, but less intense traveling her body. It was like a reminder that, she may be in pain now, but she would get better soon and thing will brighten up.

The metallic orb finally got her out of the testing track, and together they prepared to facing Her. No neurotoxin, no turret, what could happen?

The first indicator of things going wrong was a room, abandoned for a long time, with science fait projects that where mostly potato batteries. An anxious, and depressing feeling over took Chell. Her companion wondering if everything was alright, she pushed past it, but she could swear that this place was familiar. 

~~

Seeing the floor approaching at high speed, she angle her boots to hit the ground and grabbed the potato falling next to her. She hit the ground, and this time it hurt a lot more. Screaming in agony, the pain was too much and she passed out. 

Waking up and finding her way in the spheres of old Aperture was again, a lot more familiar than it should have, her boots making her feel a more bittersweet feeling, after being backstabbed by her only friend, the pain still left in her knees but yet the warm, perfectly fitting embrace of her boots reminded her to go up. That even in the lowest point, she could still get up and succeed. So that’s what Chell did. 

Her and the Potato made it back up. Fighting her once partner, they won. The AI was back in charge, she was scared that the robot, now with the power to control the whole facility once again, would decide to trap her deep underground, but no, she didn’t, instead she let her go. 

As the elevator reached a stop, and as Chell exited the door of the little shed, her companion cube was spit out. She took in the surroundings, she was in the middle of a wheat field that seems to go on forever. 

Chell didn’t looked back, she tied her companion cube to what was left her her jumpsuit, did something unthinkable, and took off her boots. Keeping one in each hand, she walked in the wheat field bare feet, the feeling of the dirt under her feet was pleasant, willingly taking off her boots and walking bare feet was a big leap for her, if only she could remembered. 

But, after all, maybe it was better that way? Maybe, her first memory didn’t matter after all that happened? Maybe, just maybe, this could be her first memory: the warm summer breeze on her cheeks, the bare feet free of any weight, walking around without a care. 

At least one thing was sure, this was a new start, and being bare feet, reminded her of hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> I ran out of data at work, so I wrote this, I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> I really hate my working boots since they hurt my feet a lot and the model I have is the only one that fit me, so every day when my shift is over, putting my Vans on is a real relief and soon became a sing of going home and relax! 
> 
> So yeah, since I am in portal hell right now I felt like It could be fun to write this! 
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> :D


End file.
